Business Incubation conference: Minister for Science and Technology Kapil Sibal at the Global Forum on Business Incubation Conference in New Delhi on Aug. 11. The Department of Science and Technology, together with InfoDev Program of the World Bank group and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, organized the conference with the theme ‘Creating Conditions to Innovation.’ (Photo: AFP)

Outsourcing to India has been cited as a key reason for the better-than-expected rise in the half-year profits of British insurance major Aviva. Aviva, part of the Norwich Union insurance group, has unveiled a 37-percent rise in first-half profits and said its move to processing in India had given it a competitive advantage with a workforce to match that in Britain.

The profits improvement to 1.13 billion pounds ($2.06 billion) was largely driven by a strong performance in general insurance, where an upfront commitment to a substantial element of personal claims processing in India has been the key to taking out costs.

–– Prasun Sonwalkar